[Debian-eeepc-devel] Skilled wiki custodians needed

[Ben Armstrong]

The Models pages aren't the only ones that need help.  The whole wiki
needs constant custodial work.  We need some people who are good at
this kind of work to help contribute.  Here is my "hit list" for areas
that need attention, in no particular order:

* Don't use the wiki as a bug tracking system.

  People tend to use the wiki to note problems instead of filing bugs
  in the BTS.  See http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC/Bugs and the
  About page linked from there for details.

* Keep pages concise.

  Partly due to the previous point, and partly due to instructions
  evolving over time to handle all of the exceptional cases, pages tend
  to get messy over time.  Each one should be as concise as possible,
  moving extra material elsewhere if it disturbs the flow.  The Install
  document needs a lot of help in this area.

* Make updates as issues are resolved.

  Pages tend to get a lot of attention in the middle of a crisis (e.g.
  lack of support for a particular driver in a current kernel). But
  once the crisis is resolved, people often don't go back to indicate
  the resolved state.  Pay attention to places where issues were raised
  some time ago, try to determine if the issue has been resolved now
  and fix up the page accordingly.  See my first point about not using
  the wiki instead of the BTS.  If you don't know the status of an
  unresolved issue, please contact this mailing list to ask.

* Keep the wiki focused.

  Instructions that are not specific to running Debian on an Eee PC
  creep into our wiki and bloat it.  Probably the worst offence here is
  the lengthy explanation of how to copy the installer image (or live
  image) onto a USB key on all of the various systems (Linux, Windows,
  Mac) that people may use for this purpose.  General instructions like
  this belong on more general pages in the Debian wiki and should just
  be cross-referenced from our wiki as needed.

* Fix dead or absolute links.

  Editors often don't adequately preview their pages to see that all
  links from the page work.  It's really not that hard, as the wiki CSS
  styling shows dead links in gray.  Also, please use relative links
  instead of absolute when you are referring to another page within our
  wiki, e.g. on a specific model page if you want to refer to another
  model, [[../1005HA]], not [[DebianEeePC/Models/1005HA]].  Or
  [[../../HowTo/Install]], not [[DebianEeePC/HowTo/Install]].  This
  makes things much easier for the translators.

* Keep translations updated.

  In some cases it would almost be better to remove out of date
  translations of pages than keep them.  Better yet, rewrite them from
  scratch.

If you think you can make a positive contribution, dive in and edit!
If you spot places where you believe changes need to be made but aren't
confident about fixing it yourself, please let us know on this list and
one of our experienced editors will take care of it.

Thanks,
Ben